conference in 2014 Fry was appointed as a
lecturer at University College London in 2012, working at the
UCL Centre for Advanced Spatial Analysis. She was later appointed senior lecturer, then professor in the Mathematics of Cities. In September 2022, she was elected a
Fellow of the Royal Academy of Engineering. In 2024, she became president of the
Institute of Mathematics and its Applications. She joined the
Faculty of Mathematics, University of Cambridge in January 2025 as the university's first Professor of the Public Understanding of Mathematics. Fry has attempted to overturn the stereotype that mathematics is "boring" and not worth studying. Although she acknowledges the subject is difficult, she believes it is possible to frame it in a manner that people can identify with. Since then, she has regularly appeared on
mainstream media in the UK, including co-hosting
The Curious Cases of Rutherford & Fry, with
Adam Rutherford, on
BBC Radio 4. From series 22, in September 2024,
Dara Ó Briain took over from Rutherford as co-presenter of
Curious Cases. In 2015, she presented a
BBC Four film biography of computing pioneer
Ada Lovelace. The following year, she co-presented
Trainspotting Live with
Peter Snow, a three-part series about trains and
trainspotting, for the same channel. In the
BBC Two series
City in the Sky Fry studied the logistics of aviation. She hosted
The Joy of Data on BBC Four, which examines the history and human impact of data. A further credit for 2016 was her co-hosting an episode of the BBC Two
Horizon series with
Dr Xand van Tulleken, titled
How to Find Love Online. In 2018, Fry presented
Contagion! The BBC Four Pandemic, about the possible impact of a flu pandemic, in which she said "we are about to simulate the outbreak of a fatal contagion throughout the UK ... if I can succeed this will save lives when, not if, a real pandemic hits." She later hosted a one-off 90-minute special of the BBC science programme ''
Tomorrow's World'' alongside four of the show's previous presenters:
Maggie Philbin,
Howard Stableford,
Judith Hann and
Peter Snow. In 2019, Fry presented a BBC Four programme titled
A Day in the Life of Earth which explored how Earth changes in a single day and how these daily changes are essential to human existence. She presented the 2019 edition of the
Royal Institution Christmas Lectures, entitled
Secrets and lies, on the hidden numbers, rules and patterns that control daily lives, being only the fourth ever mathematician to deliver the lectures. They were broadcast on BBC Four. Fry co-presented 2020's
The Great British Intelligence Test on BBC Two. She has presented further programmes for the BBC explaining the mathematics behind
COVID-19 and other pandemics. and has appeared on
Have I Got News for You. In July 2022, she presented the BBC Two documentary
Unvaccinated, in which she investigated why a portion of the British population remained unvaccinated against COVID-19. Jack Seale for
The Guardian wrote that "Fry needs some reward for ... a documentary that requires a near-saintly level of tolerance just to watch, never mind present". Fry began a six-part series in 2022 on BBC Two,
The Secret Genius Of Modern Life, in which she investigates topics such as how credit cards came into being, their manufacture and how they work, and potential future developments. The BBC commissioned a second six-part series, again presented by Fry and first broadcast in November 2023. One episode showed secrets of producing the
British passport, including a factory where they are produced, and criticised electronic gates at airports. She presented multiple episodes of
The Future With Hannah Fry on Bloomberg Originals, beginning in March 2023. Later that year, Radio 4 started to broadcast
Uncharted with Hannah Fry, a series of 15 minute documentaries about graphs. Fry acted as the 'chief number cruncher' for
Channel 4's coverage of the
2024 United Kingdom general election, analysing results data as it came in overnight. She correctly predicted the
Labour Party would win, but cautioned the party that they should "dampen their expectations". Fry has a YouTube channel with over 100 million views, and runs the podcast
The Rest Is Science with
Michael Stevens (Vsauce), that started in November 2025. The same month, she presented
The Infinite Explorer, a six-part National Geographic documentary series. The following year, she presented a three-part documentary series
AI Confidential with Hannah Fry. Fry is set to appear on the
second series of
The Celebrity Traitors in autumn 2026.
Publications Fry has authored or co-authored four books. The first,
The Mathematics of Love: Patterns, Proofs, and the Search for the Ultimate Equation (2015), includes the "37% rule", a form of the
secretary problem according to which roughly the first third of any potential partners should be rejected. The second,
The Indisputable Existence of Santa Claus (2015), discusses various Christmas-related topics and how mathematics can be involved in them, including a fair
Secret Santa, decoration of
Christmas trees, winning at
Monopoly, and comparing the vocabulary of the
Queen's Christmas message to that of the lyrics of
Snoop Dogg. Her third book is
Hello World: How to be Human in the Age of the Machine (2018), which looks at the impact of
algorithms that affect lives. In 2021, she wrote ''Rutherford & Fry's Complete Guide to Absolutely Everything (Abridged)'' with
Adam Rutherford.
Awards and honours • 2018:
Christopher Zeeman Medal from the
Institute of Mathematics and its Applications (IMA) and the
London Mathematical Society "for her contributions to the public understanding of the mathematical sciences". • 2020:
Asimov Prize, a literary-scientific award organised by the Italian INFN
Istituto Nazionale di Fisica Nucleare and GSSI graduate school
Gran Sasso Science Institute, for
Hello World. • 2020: Honorary Fellowship of the
Institution of Engineering and Technology (IET) on the 150th anniversary of the institution. • 2022: Honorary Fellowship of the
Royal Academy of Engineering. • 2023: Honorary Fellowship of the
Learned Society of Wales. • 2024:
David Attenborough Award by the
Royal Society for her "prolific science communication activity as the foremost populariser of maths in the country who continues to inspire young people to pursue maths and physics in fun and exciting ways." ==Personal life==